The (Almost) Perfect Turntable Setup | Hoppetosse

Sound engineer Ollie Sibson talks us through Hoppetosse's turntable set up - covering isolation, needles, turntable placement, tonearm height, balancing the tonearm, anti-skating and gain staging.
Read the full Art of Promoting feature: ra.co/features/4150
Producer: Sophie Misrahi
DoP: Jerry Dobson
Camera Operators: Sophie Misrahi, Jerry Dobson & Fahad Akinsanya
Editor: Jerry Dobson
Content Editor: Jeremy Wright
Graphic design: Lucy Ross
Music in order of appearance:
Alex Neri - Active Society
Primary Perception - Hyper Future Vision
00:00 Intro
01:10 Isolation
02:47 Turntable placement
03:41 Tonearm height
06:17 Anti-skating
07:12 Gain staging

[@Kirollus]

Great demonstration and much needed. Few people test the anti-skating and there's been a number of times I've tested it during sound check only to find out it's no longer working on one of the record decks and needs replacing. This should be mandatory viewing for anyone who DJs with vinyl

[@Alex-cw7xf]

wise words from the groove King Kirollus 💯👑

[@klimmersimon]

This is actually a great tutorial for setting things up. At a club but also for your home set! I've never tested the anti skating before. Turns out: it's been wrong for a long time!

[@koskoz]

Boiler room sound engineers need to watch this video.

[@duczmal]

99,9% of club onwners worldwide should watch this!

[@ayrshiresoundman]

@@duczmal so should a lot of DJs that have just decided to get into playing records.

[@legacyofdeadamo2138]

So true !!!

[@thePyiott]

Boiler Room is hosted at different locations and clubs all over the world. Probably use local engingeers

[@mikaoz4474]

realtalk

[@slopetechno]

Well done RA and CdV/Hoppetosse. This is an excellent walkthrough.

[@Alex-cw7xf]

CDV and Hoppetosse are two of my favorite clubs in Berlin. Playing records is still a big thing in Berlin / most of Europe it seems, and it's nice to see the attention to detail by the engineers and staff accordingly. After years of playing on vinyl and on a few different club setups I would like to add a few tips / modifications to these guidelines. While it's important for a tonearm to be as level as possible-according to a technician I've corresponded with at Ortofon-this is not as critical for a spherical stylus but *is* important for more complex stylus shapes, for example the Ortofon Club that has a special-elliptical shape. For setting tracking force I find it helpful to use a scale to precisely check the downforce especially when gigging around because there are always slight variations from turntable to turntable and I don't trust my tracking force without one. My main objection to any of this are anti-skate settings. Although the Technics manual and cartridge manufacturers usually advise to set the anti-skate to the same as the tracking force, if you're gonna be doing any back-cueing or scratching this should be set to 0. If you want to be more precise and set this based on the nuances of the deck you're using, you can use the technique in the video and find a single sided record without any grooves and drop the needle on. Slowly adjust the anti skate settings so the needle stays where you drop it and doesn't pull inward toward the spindle or outward to the platter. I usually bring my own cartridges (Ortofon Scratch, basically similar specs as the Q-berts) but all of these rules apply when using M44-7's or whatever house gear as well. Also, use extra care with static electricity if using plastic under your slip mats, or in general pay extra care to watch out for static because cartridges like Ortofons have a coil of wire inside as thin as a human hair that's particularly susceptible to electrostatic discharge. Luckily Ortofon are great at customer service and will replace your cartridges for free if they're under warranty, but you've been warned! ;)

[@_sl3600]

I found the scale also helps when the bearings have seen better days and the tonearm just won't let itself get balanced without swinging about :)

[@alexeyklepikov2770]

Im kinda new to this How do you prevent the static? Antistatic brushes? Internal grounding? it hasn’t been much of an issue to me but would be interesting to know in case it happens.

[@Alex-cw7xf]

​@@alexeyklepikov2770 hi there, I hope you're doing well. I realize you might be asking about two separate ideas of "static" one in a sense of the electric shock and another in the sense of audio static. I'm mainly referring to the electric kind which in my experience is inevitable and shouldn't be a concern most of the time. static charge can build up even with decent "anti-static" slip mats. as you said it's good practice to use an anti-static brush on a spinning record before dropping the stylus on and just be careful when you notice any static to not immediately touch the cartridge, especially Ortofons. ;) on the subject of audio static or "humming" you referred to internal grounding-this is to remove that extra little ground cable from your turntable that usually hooks to the back of your mixer to prevent ground hums or buzzing in your signal present when there are differences in electric potential or something something above my head. people have differing opinions on whether or not to do this but I had my technics serviced and internally grounded a few years ago and I haven't experienced any issues thusfar. others can chime in here for their opinions if they've read this far, sorry for the long post, I hope it helps. :)

[@tenspeedspins]

Second the scale. Has been a game changer for me when out doing gigs. So quick and easy. Super cheap as well. Think mine was $15 on Amazon.

[@djmartinlucas]

Really helpful, thank you. More stuff like this please, RA!

[@davo4594]

There was once an amazing video online of how Mr Scruff does his set up. This was a masterclass and probably the only thing you could call almost perfect!

[@cpkay33]

oh man thanks for this refresher on balance/level/skate.

[@aaroninky]

not sure where my original comment went: just wanted to mention that you don't need a separate '10 quid' carpenter's level anymore to check the alignments of your gear. yr iphone has a level built in to its 'measure' app. everyone is carrying a 1000 quid gyroscope in their pockets thesedays ;)

[@greencontact]

Perfect instructional clip. Thanks.

[@proudtiger2991]

My favorite club in Berlin! Betriebsfeier is an absolute must!

[@yungfatherfigure9737]

Did not know I needed to watch this video. Thank you!!!!

[@julienjean6329]

That club sounds so cool, I heard about it thanks to the mudd show, can't wait to visit Berlin again and go there !

[@MissionFitnessCTC]

Great video!

[@illfittedlondon]

Excellent. 👏

[@aigoprovata]

Great video thank you!

[@RBth-im1dd]

Ollie you legend ! ❤

[@llewellyn56]

great video

[@neilawad2741]

well explained. cheers

[@donkeyfacekilla1]

great video! I really hope some promoters watch this video and make use of the information! Some ropey ropey set ups out there hahaha

[@squiddigs7849]

big love to ollie

[@scottwheeler1951]

Nice advice got some really good tips there...

[@maccahutton2656]

sick! need to go sort mine out

[@danikoenig]

Save this for future generations!

[@ggozdil]

I don't have a turntable but i hope this information will be useful to me one day. Great video...

[@dderham_ra]

Great vid :)

[@orgonsolo6291]

Thanks!

[@tech1238]

Good stuff. Been a vinyl DJ for many years and the advice here is sound. Only thing I do differently is set the height and skate to zero for scratching

[@aaroninky]

yep, should be mentioned that anti-skate is not your friend if you're doing a lot of scratching (or even back-cueing!). and a higher turntable arm height will give a better 'bite' if you're heavy into scratching and don't care about sound quality (or gouging your records ;)),

[@ThePimBalt]

Great video, thanks! What kind of decibel meter is used?

[@offroadflow]

Great explanation! Though I'd set the counterweight in the very beginning in case it's ways too heavy...

[@carlodemarchis]

Just the video I was hoping for. Thanks! Also. Mastersounds mixer. Same one I have. Cool. I do place my turntables and place them inside the UDG case. Not ideal but best I can do when I bring them to clubs. Any thoughts?

[@simonbuchner8330]

if you still have needle-skips because of bass you should try to decouple the concrete slabs aswell. Maybe through anti vibration rubber-pieces or squash-balls

[@aaroninky]

the industry standards are surely the ISONOE feet pads. not a big expense for any club that's rocking an analog rotary mixer. they're so effective that they are even adapted for use in medical and measurement science (:

[@simonbuchner8330]

@@aaroninky for smaller clubs they’re pretty expensive though. And especially when the booth isn’t as solid as i wish it‘d be I‘ve found that a combination of different techniques works best

[@russyJ20]

4 or 5 grammes of weight on the tonearm should keep that sucker in the groove Your records wont last a life time though

[@explosivehotdogs]

@@russyJ20 ja that's the last ditch resort IMHO

[@conradhartgmx]

Nice tutorial, though I am not quite sure about the height of the tone arm… I always thought the lower end of the Ortofon Cartridge should be parallel to the vinyl (the roof of the stylus so to say).

[@danieljones836]

Thank you for videos. They are super informative and helpful. Could you please help with a query? My turntable is an audio-technica at-lp120xusb with built in phono and line pre-amp. When I connect it to my Technics su-3050 integrated amp the sound from the speakers (aiwa sx-lem70 6 ohms) is super low. Can you please tell me how I can solve this. Many thanks

[@suasimodo]

you can use a CD that you don't care about for testing the anti-skate

[@rartucio]

Is this legit? Literally the same as a record without grooves? Nice!

[@suasimodo]

@@rartucio yeah i do it all the time, it'll scratch the CD of course but the CD material isn't hard enough to ruin your needles ya know

[@_tjoeaon]

proper

[@suasimodo]

if you don't bring your own slip mats, you should at least bring a lint-roller to clean the club ones, just helps to remove any extra dust that could be present

[@abumc5104]

@suasimodo, 'lint-roller' ? what is a lint-roller ? if possible in german please.

[@doublehappiness9889]

@@abumc5104 'Fusselrolle', according to Google

[@abumc5104]

@@doublehappiness9889 'fusselrolle' to a dj-gig is really strange. i think that everyone should clean his wax before spinnin' his wax in front of a crowd. bringing the slipmats is best.

[@mundohousemixbydjhenrique]

Boa noite ! Como se chama essa base onde estão as mk2 ? Teria algum link pra compra ? Funciona com anti vibração?

[@user-ke5hr]

berlins best club. quality deep digging selectors every weekend.

[@djlancematthew]

I want that mixer so bad!!

[@chrisleigh4278]

Save your pennies and get one .

[@djlancematthew]

@@chrisleigh4278 maybe one day

[@alternervnich9418]

Dawm Thats cool :) Where is that?

[@arielshpitzer]

i wish i had this video when i still owned my technics

[@sergedotcom]

Lol i dunno why i watched this but yeah. Shout out Clovis and Bruno!! Miss ya dudes

[@housinauthority5258]

I have owned Technic 1210 MK 2's since 1992. I never set them up like this at all and have had zero problems!

[@drubber007]

Your vinyl will most likely have suffered though.

[@chrisleigh4278]

Do you live on a boat ?

[@sanjuacharya]

wow

[@explosivehotdogs]

re: isolation - I would recommend Isonoe turntable feet

[@francois-renesix3597]

Olliegend

[@thisisnicolas4957]

what about the feet of the turntable? do you screw them in all the way? or just one rotation?

[@Alex-cw7xf]

the feet are used to level the turntable, the amount of rotations are somewhat irrelevant in this regard

[@bscoockie4546]

7:37 help find me the trackkkk?? ❤️ already check the description but I can’t find it

[@cheliozlatchkeykid7886]

0:42 good, as it should be. Never get extended pitch so the DJ won’t mix trance onto techno. Check. Thank you RA

[@OriginallyInspired]

absolute chancer

[@colemangroove5314]

Can someone please elaborate on the BPM and Pitch shifting he alluded too?

[@Alex-cw7xf]

typically turntables have a +/- 8 adjustable pitch range, but with ultrapitch these goes to +/- 16 which allows for a wider range of BPMs to be played.

[@ariellbrothers7188]

Anyone so kind to share the links of all the setup?

[@thosethatcan]

6:30 🎉

[@oakcityslums1769]

why is 150 bpm not playable?

[@conradhartgmx]

Because its too slow.

[@ToasterShow]

Did I just got it wrong or is it not allowed to play out of the 120-130 range?

[@DanteScaglione]

He was just saying that anything far outside that range is probably inappropriate / not the vibe at their club.

[@abumc5104]

beats per minute is best from 120 to 130 ladies & gentlemen. with the right music and crowd, it's enough for the dancers. but the hoppers and poppers in the crowd may be missing more beats per minute to go wild, like 👾🚨🐎🤪👻💣💥🚀🌕☄️☢️

[@cmjones83]

He's talking about this particular club and what the dancers expect.

[@paantimo]

Ortophon concorde manual recommends setting anti skate to 0. No idea why.

[@einorastv]

I'm glad somebody brought this up. Playing in a club with anti-skate seems rather odd since back cueing becomes impossible. Ortofon recommends that for DJs because while spinning the record backwards the anti-skate pops your needle back at the start of the record since the mechanism is thinking the needle is drifting.

[@arend3669]

Everything is sound here expect maybe the anti skating, what he says is ofcourse, true. But for DJ'ing you scratch and back cue lots... Anti Skating isn't your friend in that scenario and you'd want the anti skate at 0 for DJ'ing... But it depends on how heavy you scratch cue your records hehe

[@clouq9]

More educational than my 4 year aeronautical science degree 😅

[@abumc5104]

@Clouq9, aeronautics totally overrated, go and learn to dj like a master@work.

[@marvinarmstrong3372]

Don't exaggerate.

[@tombyrnerocks]

Fantastic, until a DJ comes into the booth, bangs the counterweight all the way on and blu-tacks a coin onto the cartridge 😂

[@russyJ20]

Anythings better than a needle jumping during a session

[@drubber007]

@@russyJ20 Not for your vinyl.

[@russyJ20]

@@drubber007 ..or stylus. but both are replaceable

[@drubber007]

@@russyJ20 Of course but clearly better for both though if you just set your shit up right.

[@BeardslapRadio]

150BPM isn’t danceable?

[@Sliimbo96]

Not in these two clubs. Doesn’t fit the vibe

[@JoJO-px9fi]

Have you been to Hoppetosse?

[@Sliimbo96]

@@JoJO-px9fi had plenty a night in both

[@JoJO-px9fi]

@@Sliimbo96 not you, I meant it for the guy asking about 150 bpms

[@TheStaubzauger]

Not mixable with slower tempo records. Nothing to de with the club. But with music selection and variety of tempo’s

[@scriptguru4669]

a 10 quid level is piss, even worse after throwing it about like that.

[@AboveTheTrees00]

if you dont know how to mix records or create interesting transition that go over +/- 8% on regular technics you need to check your skills, the tonearm adjusting demo is proper..

[@giggity-goggity-doo805]

He wasn’t talking about mixing in the strict sense (as in transitioning between songs), but rather significantly altering the speed of a record to hit a bpm range compatible with the club to be fair. Also pitching House records up to 140 is a lot of fun in my opinion

[@AboveTheTrees00]

i'm just saying not every transition has to be beatmatched there are so many ways to transition from record to record. So the =16 - 16% doesn't matter

[@looking.for.treasure]

@@AboveTheTrees00 give a few examples of how you'd mix records that have very different bpm, lets say 130 and 100, or 80 and 120... obv depends on the mood of the record, but just curious what are your ways to do it technically

[@cmjones83]

​@@looking.for.treasure You don't have to beat match every transition. Echo out, reverb out, mix out of a breakdown or fade-out etc

[@zukispur5493]

For crazy +/- pitch the audio technica AT LP 1240. the motor on it is crazy too.

[@mookie1247]

Garage

[@coltercarson4506]

“vinyls” 😂

[@DanteScaglione]

Anybody who actually cares about someone saying “vinyls” is a fucking dork. It’s an odd thing to do, but the guy clearly cares about records, so who gives a shit.

[@markgwyther6137]

The anti-skating should be set to. 0 if you’re mixing and queueing up your record .. you will damage your vinyl 😢

[@olliesibson6567]

just play cdjs then bro

[@LASHH9669]

Hate to nitpick, but you said perpendicular when you meant parallel when talking about the tone arm height/ angle. Great video though! I need to invest in some concrete

[@mikegeary8056]

Dude said vinyls

[@davidwalsh3037]

All credibility lost

[@pinealbland5076]

Why isn’t a engineer explaining all this?

[@deephouseaustralia]

engineer lol

[@LordHando]

Lol, resident advisor finally found something to talk about. That website has been corny and dry with articles from artists friends.

[@gbrl_cyber]

yeah, i used to be on the site a lot but nowadays what they do articles about has nothing to do with this area of house and techno we're in. g

[@LordHando]

@@gbrl_cyber actually that's all they write about... the same flavors. These writers are literally guest list friends of the artists. Exposure by association of the same handful of dorks. This isn't a MUSIC driven website. RA is club driven. All the writers are super happy to be on the guest list.

[@VADERETROSATANAS000]

Adio engienering, audiophile consulted an very much things here not incluses abuout

[@westietech6275]

Worst model released. The pitch is awefull

[@clivehenry5750]

The model you dont want to see lol

[@moket123]

What's wrong with the pitch?

[@westietech6275]

@@moket123 it’s digital and its awefull to mix on

[@clivehenry5750]

@@moket123 the digital signal will throw a spanner between your senses and reactions,like driving on ice youll over compensate and then spin out

[@moket123]

@@clivehenry5750 can't have that happening

[@slinky576]

You can’t beat a rotary gain mixer like 👍 Quality

[@duczmal]

The Technics 1200GR are soooo much better and have more damping performance over the old mk2-mk6…. Try this one!

[@persona250]

All good but they will hate the digital pitch .

[@duczmal]

@@persona250 its updated and when you set them to the lowerst torque settings, they perform like old good mk2